The Olympus Tough TG-1 iHS would be a very good camera even without a rugged design. Its go-anywhere design, GPS, fast f/2 lens, and impressive high ISO performance make it our Editors' Choice for rugged point-and-shoot cameras.

The Olympus Tough TG-1 iHS ($399.99 direct) is not your typical rugged point-and-shoot camera. This pocket shooter looks more like a traditional camera—its lens is centered rather than perched in the corner—and has a fast f/2 aperture on the wide end. The 12-megapixel TG-1 iHS can go down as far as 40 feet underwater, fires full-resolution images at 5 frames per second, and offers GPS functionality. Put all of these features together and you have an ideal outdoor model that ousts the Nikon Coolpix AW100 ($379.95, 4 stars) as our Editors' Choice for rugged cameras.

Design and Features The TG-1 eschews the standard rugged point-and-shoot design, which places the lens in the top corner. In addition to making it look a bit more like a standard camera, the TG-1 has the unique ability in its class to accept 40.5mm filters and conversion lenses—although you will need to grab the $20 CLA-T01 adapter to support filters. It measures 2.5 by 3.9 by 1 inches (HWD) and is a bit hefty at 7.8 ounces. The Pentax Opto WG-2 GPS ($399.95, 3.5 stars), another tough camera with a centered lens, measures 2.4 by 4.8 by 1.2 inches and weighs 7 ounces.

A 4x zoom lens covers a nice 25-100mm (35mm equivalent) field of view, which is a bit wider than the 28-140mm lens built into the Canon PowerShot D20 ($349.99, 4 stars). More impressive is its maximum f/2 aperture, which lets in about four times as much light as the f/3.9 lens that is found on the Canon D20 , Nikon AW100 , and Olympus Tough TG-820 ($299.99, 4 stars). This makes it possible to shoot at faster shutter speeds without pumping up the ISO, and the wide 25mm field of view is ideal for underwater use, where refraction introduces a 1.33x crop factor. If you need to go wider, Olympus makes a fisheye converter lens for around $120—it, too, is rated for use in 40 feet of water. There's also a 1.7x Teleconverter available for $110—it changes the lens to a 43-170mm zoom.

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The 3-inch rear display uses OLED technology rather than the more-common LCD. Even though it only has a 610k-dot resolution, it looks just as good as the 1,030k-dot LCD found on the TG-820 . Because it's OLED, the contrast and viewing angles are greater, making it more useful on bright, sunny days. The bulk of the camera's controls are to the right of the display. These include a zoom rocker, video recording button, and a four-way controller. The TG-1 also sports a Mode dial to change shooting settings—an amenity that is often excluded from tough cameras. The controls aren't perfect—you'll still have to dive into an overlay menu to adjust ISO, Exposure Compensation, Drive mode, and some other common functions, but if you're the type of shooter who likes to use art filters or scene modes, having them readily available via the physical dial is a benefit.

One of the settings on the dial is Super Sport Mode, which should come in quite handy for an outdoor-centric camera. Setting the TG-1 to this mode tells it to get the fastest shutter speed possible—as fast as 1/2000 second under the right lighting conditions—and to grab 5-shot bursts every time the Shutter is pressed. This is geared toward shooting sports and action, as the camera will do everything it can to ensure that you get the perfect action shot.

The camera is rated for underwater use up to 40 feet, which equals the rating of the Pentax WG-2. It can also survive drops from heights up to 6.6 feet, can withstand 220 pounds of pressure, and operate in temperatures as low as 14°F. If 40 feet isn't deep enough, you can add a dedicated underwater housing to the camera. At $310 it costs nearly as much as the camera itself, but will allow you to dive and shoot all the way down to 135 feet. If your needs for a rugged camera aren't this extreme, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS20 ($179.99, 3.5 stars) is a great bargain, although it can only hit depths of 16 feet, is outfitted with a fairly low-resolution LCD, and lacks most of the bells and whistles found on the TG-1.

In addition to a GPS, which only takes about 40 seconds to lock onto a signal, the camera has an electronic compass and a manometer. The former will point you north, and can also act as a multi-axis level to help ensure that you are holding the camera parallel to the horizon. The latter records elevation and underwater depth, and will warn you as you approach the 40-foot underwater limit.

Rounding out the camera's feature set is an LED light, positioned on the front of the camera. This serves two purposes—it speeds up the autofocus system, and can be used to add light to your subject when shooting in Macro mode. It doesn't work as well as the six-LED setup on the Pentax Optio WG-2G GPS, but certainly comes in handy when working in Macro.

Performance and Conclusions The TG-1 is an impressively speedy camera. It can start and shoot in just under a second, rattles off full-resolution photos at 5 frames per second, and records a short 0.2-second shutter lag. It can also capture 100-shot bursts of 3-megapixel photos at either 15 or 60fps. Olympus rates the 5fps full resolution burst to 25 shots, but I was able to get almost double that using a SanDisk 95MBps memory card—with no sign of the camera slowing down. You'll only find one other camera that can keep up with the TG-1—the TG-820, also from Olympus. It requires 1.5 seconds to start and shoot, matches the TG-1's 5fps shooting, records a 0.1-second shutter lag and supports the same 15 and 60fps burst shooting modes.

The only area where the TG-1 lags a bit behind is in image sharpness. According to Imatest, its lens delivers 1,656 lines per picture height using a center-weighted metric, which is shy of the 1,800 lines required for a sharp image. Although the fast f/2 lens lets in a lot of light and its sharpness at dead center is in excess of 2,300 lines, softness in the edges and corners bring its overall score down. If you value sharpness over light-gathering capability, the Nikon AW100 is a better choice, notching an impressive 2,166 lines.

Imatest also measures image noise, which can hurt image quality and often rears its head at higher ISO settings. The TG-1 keeps noise below 1.5 percent through ISO 1600, and manages to preserve a good amount of detail at that setting as well. You can push the camera as high as ISO 6400 in a pinch, but hopefully you won't have to thanks to the f/2 lens. Not every camera with a good Imatest ISO score is created equally—the Pentax WG-2 also keeps noise under control through ISO 1600, but does so at the cost of almost every bit of fine image detail, a pitfall that the TG-1 avoids.

The TG-1 records QuickTime video in 1080p60 or 720p60 formats. The footage is crisp, bright, and smooth, as you would expect at those frame rates, but it does exhibit a bit of a jittery effect when examined closely. There's a micro HDMI output to connect the camera to an HDTV, and a proprietary USB port that doubles as a connection for the included AC adapter. There isn't a dedicated battery charger included, so you'll have to plug the camera into the wall to charge its battery. Standard SD, SDHC, and SDXC memory cards are supported.

If you're in the market for a rugged camera, you'd be hard pressed to find a better one than the TG-1 iHS, so it's no surprise that it earns our Editors' Choice award. The camera's fast f/2 lens, tough design, excellent high ISO performance, and fast-shooting capabilities come at a price, though. At $400, it's one of the most-expensive rugged point-and-shoots on the market. If you're willing to sacrifice some toughness and light-gathering capability, you can opt for the less-expensive Canon PowerShot D20 or Olympus Tough TG-820, both of which are quite capable and offer slower lenses with a bit more sharpness and telephoto reach. If your budget is even tighter than that, the $180 Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS20 is a solid option, although it's not as durable or well-appointed as more expensive rugged cameras.

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